


Christmas in the lodging house

by KINGRACETRACK



Category: Newsies, Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Christmas, Cute, Gen, Knitting, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25536814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KINGRACETRACK/pseuds/KINGRACETRACK
Summary: It’s Christmas time in New York, the time people should be with families  This makes it difficult for some of the newsies, knowing they don’t have family makes christmas a lot harder for them. Davey begins to notice a change in Albert, noticing how they always run off somewhere every night and  every morning. When confronting them he gets nowhere, until christmas day arrives.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Christmas in the lodging house

For the past few weeks Albert has been distanced from the other newsies. They’d wake up 3 hours before everyone else, sell their papes (faster than everyone else) and disappear again until late at night. No one knows where they go or what they do, but it was starting to worry a few. 

“Hey Albert where you off to?” Elmer runs up to them as they begin to walk away from the lodging house. 

“Huh?” they question, pretending they didn’t hear him, 

“You’re running off again.” Davey jogs from the other side of the street to stand next to Elmer. “Where do you go? What’s going on?” 

Albert notices the sad expression on his face and a wave of guilt comes over them, knowing they can’t tell him the truth. 

“I- I just-“ They begin to stutter, struggling of what lie to go with. 

Elmer reaches his hand out to Albert’s shoulder, “Come on, come back to the lodging house. It’s not safe out here at night. It’s dark and it’s cold.” 

“It’s Christmas tomorrow! Come on Alb, we always ‘celebrate’ Christmas eve and morning” Davey whines whilst air quoting the word ‘celebrate’

Their celebration is singing Christmas songs before going to sleep, dancing and enjoying the small bit of food they save/steal. This is their Christmas and they each wouldn’t trade it for anything else. 

“I’ll be okay. I’ll be back tonight, okay?” Albert gives them a reassuring smile and before the boys can respond they turn on their heel and jog out the road until they’re unseen. 

A few hours pass and Davey sits on his bed, surrounded by lunatics singing and dancing, falling over anything and everything in the tiny space they have. As everyone is laughing and cheering, all he feels is worry and concern. Concern for Albert and if they’re safe, if they’re alive. 

More hours go by and no one has heard from or seen Albert, Davey remains in the same spot as before still waiting to see them walk around the corner. By now most of the newsies have tired themselves out and fallen asleep, the others still chatting away. 

“You okay Davey?” 

He snaps out of his focus on that corner and turns to see Jack sitting next to him. 

“Hmm? Yeah I-“ He turns back to the corner one last time

“They’ll be okay. This is Albert we’re talking about.”

“I know, but-“ Jack places his hand on Davey’s cheek which cuts him off mid sentence. 

“You look terrible, get some sleep. They’ll be in that bed tomorrow when we wake up.” 

He stays silent for a moment, thinking that Jack’s right. There’s nothing to worry about and he’ll see them when he wakes up. 

“Another 5 minutes.” Davey takes Jack’s hand in his as he gives him a small but sweet smile. 

“You’re too good.” Jack places a gentle kiss on his forehead before getting into the bed next to his. “Goodnight Davey.” 

“Night Jackey.” 

Those 5 minutes pass, and an extra 10, and he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. He turns to that corner one more time, what he didn’t know would be the last time of that night before his head hits his pillow and he falls into a deep sleep. 

The next morning Davey wakes to the sound of the newsies all talking amongst themselves. He sits up and scans the room before his eyes land on Albert in their bed next to his. 

“Albert? What time did you get back last night? Where were you?” 

Albert doesn’t respond with words, instead they smile and tilt their head towards the end of his bed. Davey follows the direction to find a bunch of newspapers wrapped around something. He goes and picks it up before turning back to Albert. 

“What’s this?” 

“Davey!” The sound of his little brother comes from behind him

“What’s up buddy?”

“Santa came!! Did you get one too?!” 

“He sure did!” Albert answers for him, “You think Santa would miss Davey out? He’s one of the nicest on Santa’s list!” 

With that, Les runs off again to his friends. Davey furrows his eyebrows, confused and still not fully awake yet. 

“Just open it already.” Albert Sighs

A small smile creeps on Davey’s face as he begins to open the gift. When he does, his face lights up to find a pair of knitted red gloves. 

“What-?” He doesn’t know where to begin, his heart just filled with joy.

“Happy Christmas.” Albert smiles big 

“This is where you’ve been? This is why you’re not getting enough sleep? I thought something serious was going on!”

“It’s worth it.” Albert looks around the room at all the huge smiles and laughter.

As Davey looks up at them with tears in their eyes, Jack jumps onto his bed and knocks his shoulder 

“What did you get! I got this hat!” He placed the thick black hat on his head and grins like a child, ear-to-ear.

Davey shows him the gloves before placing them on to see how they feel.

“You’re always saying how your fingers get cold” Albert chuckles. 

“Where did you get the paper from?” Davey picks up the newspapers that they were wrapped in. 

“What do you mean where did i get them from? We sell newspapers you idiot.”

“No i mean, how? Did you steal them or what?” Davey raises an eyebrow. 

“No i just didn’t sell them”

“But you’d have to pay for them? that’s a lot of money!” He looks around at all the newsies, counting up in his head how many papers he’d needed to save. 

“It was worth it. It is Christmas after all.” 

“Davey come on! We’ve got to get to work!”

They both look up to where Les is calling from in his little red hat to match Davey’s red gloves. 

“I best get going. Thank you Alb. You’re the best.” He gives them a huge smile and pats their shoulder before getting up and ready to sell papers. 

Albert sits back on his bed watching everyone put on their new gloves, hats and scarfs before heading out into the cold New York streets. 

‘just 5 minutes’ Albert thinks to themselves as they close their eyes, catching up on all the sleep they lost to knit the gifts. It made him exhausted but it was worth it to see all the happy faces in the lodging house.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked :) this idea was based off a tweet from Ella so thank you for this Ella 
> 
> Follow me on twitter @/KINGRACETRACK


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